I went to his live performance in the Tate Modern in London. It was the weirdest performance I ever saw.

And despite being experienced in listening to experimental electronic music I played that album thrice and find it very tiring.

J.i.t.t.e.r.

I find the choice of mechanical keyboard and DAC/Amp rather weird. So you can enjoy some tunes between the clickety clackety of your typing.

I’ll check that out!

I’m not a Metallica fan, or a metalhead for that matter. So I won’t pretend to know / understand anything about the genre. That said; I found Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets the most enjoyable albums in terms of sound quality and music. There’s so much to discover there on a decent system. They’re fun, and it sounds like they’re having fun too.

Have you taken into account that both are programmable and can sound vastly different even between the same chip?

5k. And you want a seperate dac with proper phono stage an streamer?

I have this feeling that the biggest mystery to /r/audiophile users is that amps and preamps can already contain a very good DAC and phono stage. I’d focus on that, before going budget seperates.

Go with an Arcam SA30, Marantz Model 40n, Nad m10 (and probably many more) and you have an AMP, preamp, decent streamer, decent dac, great phono stage (atleast the model 40). Less clutter, less complicated operation, less failure points.

Sure, you wont get to list a million brands and products on the ASR forum threads but there you are with one remote just enjoying tunes.

Decades ago, a fellow audiophile told me something I won’t forget. Paraphrasing: “There are people who buy expensive paintings. That’s fine, but you can only look at a million-dollar painting, one picture, so many times. Me, I’d rather take one-tenth of that money and build a stereo system that puts me in touch with virtually all the sonic art that’s ever been created.”

While I agree completely; there’s the resale value. The painting probably has a better resale value. While the equipment might fetch 40% retail after a couple of years. Unless you scored yourself a very coveted piece that gained value over time, which is rare.

Art collectors are mostly in it for the money; they need to park their funds somewhere. Audiophiles are in it for the experience, and I hope they know it is at a net loss.